near harvest, need some advice

my girls are 50 days into flowering and starting to change colour and there getting sticky how do i no when is the right time to harvest them and the best way to do it.

iv herd putting them in darkness makersd them produce more resin crystals. cheers

Here is a great chart to go by. Putting them into full dark 36 hours before you chop is a good thing; they do produce more resin (from what I've been told).

the best way to harvest is looking at the trichromes like potpimp says. the plants produce more resin when subject to darkness at the end of the flowering cycle because the plant thinks its going to die. This makes it produce more resin to try and attract pollen. (the only thing the plant wants to do is 'reproduce') this is my understanding of it...

if you dont have a magnifier glass, one way to tell is by the color of the hairs. (this only indicates the plant is maturing, but is an 'ok' way of harvesting, not the best) i would get a magnifying glass at some point.

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There are a lot of variables. For example, the harvest I started two days ago won't be done for two more days.
Do I go just right on the first day's trim or the last day's trim? Or average?

I went with last day, putting the hang date as saturday.
Four day minimum hang time and that is wednesday.
Thanksgiving weekend starts thrursday and everything is good to go.
The deciding factor is thanksgiving.

I grow a sativa with a two week window of opportunity. It does not develop amber trichomes. The hairs do get brown and start sucking back in on the bottom of the buds, but I harvest while white hairs are still on top, they don't seem to ever stop appearing.
I have gone as long as two weeks longer than recomended without damage to potency, just more difficult to harvest due to softened leaves. Adding that gives a month to play with.

THC appears slowly and disappears slowly. Taste, on the other hand, is much pickier.
On a new strain I will pick a bud every day or two and test smoke after a three day hang in a dry spot. This really helps for the next grow, I use the same strains year after year.

On my indica the window is a week, the hairs suck all the way back in and I call it good. Early and late smoke tests did not differ much, taste seems to be more in the cure with Northern Lights.

are the trichomes well noticeable under magnifier glass and do they form on the hairs or the bud. also when i pull them up should i hang them with roots still atached for 1 day o should i cut the roots off.

runamuk said:

are the trichomes well noticeable under magnifier glass and do they form on the hairs or the bud. also when i pull them up should i hang them with roots still atached for 1 day o should i cut the roots off.

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Yes, they are noticeable under your standard magnifying glass. You will need a 20x or 50x to get an ideal look at the resin heads. The pick Potpimp posted is a good example. The Trichs form on the bud and bud leaves.

I would cut it at the base, some people hang the whole plant minus the big fan leaves but it can make trimming a pain. I have never hung the whole plant so I'm unable to confirm if it is a better method or not. I just hang the nuggets.

Look at the trichomes under a magnifying glass.. the buds are at peak potency when the individual crystals are standing straight up and are milky white, this is the perfect time to harvest the lot.. leaving them to mature a little further and the crystals will start the degradation process.. trichomes will slouch over and will turn slightly brown... still lethal smoke! ..but the bud will contain more CBD in it.. the chemical that results in a heavier lethargic (crucified to the chair) stoned as opposed to a soaring energetic/euphoric high, which most growers will strive for.. HARVEST WHEN YOUR TRICHOMES HAVE A FULL BLOWN ERECTION, When they're saying... I'M READY!

runamuk said:

are the trichomes well noticeable under magnifier glass and do they form on the hairs or the bud. also when i pull them up should i hang them with roots still atached for 1 day o should i cut the roots off.

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The hanging upside down with the roots still on is a holdover from the 70's, LOL. We thought it was those beautiful fan leaves that got us high! It won't hurt to do it whole but it will take you 3x as long to trim it if you do it like that and you'll probably run a higher risk of bud mold with them touching. I yank off the fan leaves first, snip off each branch, then trim the sweet leaf (the itty bitty leaves sticking out of the bud. Make sure to save the sweet leaf because it contains a lot of THC. If you're not making hash or BHO you may want to leave it on and smoke it.